


eyes wide open when you’re dreaming

by fourhorsemen



Category: DCU
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dark, M/M, No Beta, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:35:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25725220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourhorsemen/pseuds/fourhorsemen
Summary: In the wake of The Dark Knight’s disappearance, Jason and Dick are forced to take on the mantle of Gotham’s Protectors. It culminates in something neither of them expect.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	eyes wide open when you’re dreaming

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Random Works vol 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144990) by [empires](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empires/pseuds/empires). 



> Soundtrack: Wake Up - EDEN

Jason’s ears are ringing, black spots dance in front of his eyes as Dick drags him towards the alleyway, bruised and graceless, tumbling over his feet in his haste. He can feel the tremors beneath his feet, aftershocks ricochet through his bones like his skeleton is a tuning fork. There’s blood in his mouth, hot and coppery, slithering down his throat and vaguely, he realizes his helmet is missing. He gets a flash of an image, a sense memory that rocks him physically, of making a flying tackle into Dick, a blur of blue and black mid-grapple, hand reaching out desperately as the warehouse exploded around them. He hazily remembers the helmet slipping off with the force of the explosion, falling down, down into the fiery wreckage below them. What dominates is the searing pain of red-hot shrapnel slicing, digging and embedding into his exposed face, more catching in his body armor as he clutched Dick’s waist with a white-knuckle grip that had surely left bruises through his suit, surely, but there was Death, licking at their heels and it hadn’t mattered. 

Jason’s vision slides into focus when Dick practically shoves him into the Batmobile with shaking hands, Jason’s eyes settle morbidly on blood spatter down one side of his face as he’s maneuvered like a doll. Dick crawls over Jason’s lap to reach the driver’s seat, trembling like a leaf, instead of walking to the other side of the car, as if even the sense had been punched out of him. They both heave for breath, staring through the windshield at the gutted remains of the building. Dick doesn’t move to turn the ignition, just sits there and when Jason’s ears stop ringing, he can hear the hysterical, panicked hitch to his rapid breaths. He turns sideways to look at him, throat working to swallow his own crusted blood as he does and sees Nightwing unmasked, shoulders shaking, bottom lip shivering, eyes so, so wide in their horror. It comes back to him then, in flashes, the victims, all huddled in a corner. The battered, bruised victims who’s bloody, charred remains they’d left to coagulate and rot in there, as they flew out of the building to live another day. _The children they had failed._

Neither of them speak, neither of them move, there are no comms ringing and there is no voice radioing into the vehicle. Everything is silent but even in the soundproofed interior of the mobile, Jason can hear the lick of the flames he sees, he can hear the agonized screams and when he looks down at himself, all he can see is shrapnel and blood, _so much blood_. Nightwing’s suit is glossy with dark fluid, his face is caked with muddy red and Jason knows it isn’t theirs. He wants to believe they shed it, wants to believe he’s bleeding out but no, the blood isn’t theirs. They had been sitting on landmines, the children, the _victims_ , as a present wrapped and sealed tight just for them, for Nightwing and Redhood, Dynamic Duo, for the incompetent knockoffs trying to quell the carnage of a Gotham unchained and unhinged. He wants to laugh, he wants to laugh and laugh until the blood he’d swallowed sputters out of his throat and splashes across the dashboard like a new, ugly paint job. All he can do is stare unseeingly at the fruition of their inevitable failure.

Jason and Dick turn to look at each other at the same time, eyes meeting, grief-stricken, guilt-ridden and the air becomes charged between them like a tense, living wire. Suddenly, all Jason can see is Dick, Dick, _Dick_ , haunted blue eyes flitting, probing, searching desperately for something in Jason’s own. He doesn’t know what he looks like, doesn’t know if Dick finds it, but whatever Dick sees has him launching himself over onto Jason. The wire between them snaps as gloved, slippery hands grip him, as thighs clench around his, as a mouth is pushed frantically against his. Dick is sloppy and his mouth is wet, but Jason kisses back like a drowning man who is thrown a line, his hands go up to grip Dick’s biceps fiercely, pulling on that line with the frenzy of a man in the maw of death. Dick pushes closer, tries to climb into him and Jason pulls him in wildly, heart beating like a drum in his ears, blood pumping through his veins like gunpowder.

Dick kisses him between gasps, like he can’t breath but can’t bear to tear himself away and Jason understands, he _understands_. His hands slip slide on Dick’s suit, trying to find the opening because he needs flesh, he needs to feel the naked, comforting heat of Dick’s skin. Dick shudders against his mouth and strains his own hands backwards, and there’s the sharp hiss of a zipper in the still, sterilized quiet of the Batmobile. Jason’s hands claw violently at Dick’s back and then yank the rest of the suit down, where they catch at his biceps, revealing bare shoulders, sweat gleaming. Jason pants and drags his lips messily down from Dick’s to his neck, biting, sucking, feeling the heat of flesh on his tongue and Dick is trembling, his hips are pumping into Jason’s abs, still covered with body armor, looking for friction. Dick whines, shakes his head from side to side and Jason tastes the salt of tears that drip down Dick’s face to pool in his clavicles, where Jason laves his tongue.

Jason pulls back and puts his mouth back on Dick’s, a small comfort for a man who writhes in his lap, face tortured, tear tracks cutting through crusted blood on his cheeks. He offers his tongue, licks into Dick’s mouth almost reverently and Dick yanks his gloves off, digs his nails into Jason’s armor clad shoulders. He tries to bring his feet up in slips and starts, but there is no space in the interior of the mobile because it is small, compact, inconspicuous and serviceable like the Dark Knight intended it to be. Jason’s rough hands traverse the planes of skin revealed to him but Dick’s desperate, trembling ones push them down to where the suit remains half-unzipped and with a soft bite to Dick’s bottom lip, Jason acquiesces and pulls the zipper down, pushes the fabric down over shoulders until it pools at Dick’s hip, revealing a chest mottled with bruises in shades of deep blue and sickly yellow.

Jason lets his dirty, disgusting hands drift all over the revealed flesh, lets his rough, broad fingers catch on the edges of raised scars until he lets his hands settle on Dick’s hips, lets them unfurl and hold on painfully tight. Dick is struggling, writhing in his lap, chest rising and falling so rapidly that Jason doesn’t know what to do other than hold on, crush his thumbs so tightly into his skin he can feel Dick’s hipbones. Dick lets out a sob, and the pitiful sound is like the twist of a knife in Jason’s gut. Dick’s hands go from Jason’s shoulders, up to tangle in his hair, yanking at the strands and hyperventilating into Jason’s mouth, lips slack and open but unmoving. Dick’s glassy eyes and defeated expression push Jason into gear, before he’s even aware of what he’s doing, his hands are lifting Dick until the man’s head slams into the roof of the car.

He holds Dick up with one hand and pulls his suit down with the other until it’s clean off his hips and crumpled at his feet. Dick shudders and Jason pulls him back into his lap, scrambles to unbuckle his own belt and unzip as Dick pulls him into another kiss by the hair, fingers tight and tangled in his unruly, dirty black curls. He pulls his hard cock out and forgets how to breath when Dick gets so close it feels like he’s trying to climb into him, like he's trying to push his hands through Jason's ribcage and open him up so Dick can nestle in, make his home in the cavity of Jason’s chest, rest his ear to his beating, bloody heart. He chokes in a breath when he sees Dick’s half-hard cock springing to life, sees the picture his naked thighs make against his own clothed ones. Dick arches his back, blue eyes blown wide and staring into his fucking _soul_ , tries to pull his feet up to wrap his legs around Jason’s waist but _can’t_ , there’s no space, no space in this fucking coffin of car.

Jason is the one hyperventilating now, rough palms gripping and sliding over every piece of skin he can reach, wishing he didn’t have all his armor on so he could feel the comforting heat of Dick’s skin its entirety. A savage, feral expression comes over Dick’s face, blue eyes turbulent like a lightning storm and then Dick is swinging a leg over Jason’s shoulder, putting his ass flush with Jason’s hard cock. Jason groans and throw his head back, eyes rolling back in his head and hands spasming where they grip Dick’s hips. Dick smashes his lips to Jason’s, rolls his hips with delicious friction on his cock and Jason strains up to meet him, pumps his hips up and feels the teeth of his zipper catch on the base of his cock as he does. Dick slaps the heel of his hand on the dashboard behind him and the glove compartment clicks open, he fumbles unseeingly and then throws a tin into Jason’s lap.

Jason breaks away from Dick’s wet lips to look down and laughs humorlessly when he sees what it is. Gun oil, fucking _gun oil_ , so innocuous yet out of place in the Batmobile because that’s _Jason_ ’s gun oil. The Dark Knight would never go so low as to carry a firearm, would never even shoot to incapacitate, he’d rather string Gotham scum up and watch as they were booked by police, only to chase the same shitbags down the next month. Fucking _Batman_ , isn’t he why they got here? Why Dick was desperately unscrewing the lid, coating his fingers in slick oil and pumping two fingers into himself, a tortured look on his face, eyes stormy and pupils dilated till a sliver of blue remained to hypnotize Jason with its azure color. They were both caught beneath the midnight crest of the tsunami that was Gotham City without its Saviour, without the exacting hand of Batman to quell the rise of its’ grit-caked, polluted tides. One without a mentor and father, lost and guileless like a child who’d lost his way in a crowded, pitch dark room and another without the blaze of obsession, without the destructive lust for vengeance that drove him to this shit-stain of a city.

Jason feels that wave crest when Dick sinks down, muscles of his thighs straining as he bounces urgently on his cock. Dick is looking at him but not really looking at him, but Jason can’t utter a complaint when his eyes are trained behind Dick’s shoulders, staring at fire as it smolders to a simmer, slithers along a scorched façade, can almost make out the shapes of dark, ashy skeletons in the dark of Gotham night. Dick sobs with every rough upwards thrust of Jason’s hips, and the slap of skin is loud and filthy in the small, cramped interior of Bruce Wayne’s car. Jason holds on to Dick’s extended leg tightly when it begins to slip off his shoulder, holds it even when Dick’s face is a tormented mix of pleasure and pain. Dick’s cock is still trapped without friction, without purchase, so Jason lets his other hand touch it, lets his palm curl around it and pump. Dick whines, his keening cry echoes and ricochets off every sleek, unmarred surface and he muffles it into Jason’s neck, mouth wet and panting against Jason’s pulse point.

Jason swallows thickly, a sick feeling in his gut that is overtaken with arousal and heat as he thrusts faster, harder, jostling Dick in his lap and making the man moan quietly into his neck. He knows Dick can feel the rat-a-tat of his heartbeat on his swollen lips, knows he can taste the sweat, dust, ash and blood on his skin. He pumps his fist in time with his uncoordinated thrusts, hips jerking unsteadily and knees smacking into the dashboard, is rewarded with Dick’s gratified moans, growing steadily louder as Jason snaps his hips higher and higher, heedless of the stinging in his knees, trying to fill Dick with his cock until the man can feel in it his _throat_. Jason tries to fuck the hurt away, fuck the grief away into Dick’s tight heat, closing his eyes so he can’t see, can’t _remember,_ and Dick meets his every thrust like he understands because he does. 

It’s Dick’s broken whisper of his name that finally undoes him, _“Jay,”_ whispered like it was ripped straight from his throat, like Jason himself had put his hand into Dick’s mouth, reached his arm down into his gut and pulled it out of him, and maybe he had. Maybe he had, with his hand on Dick’s cock and his own cock filling him up, offering him the comfort he craved, but selfishly taking and taking and _taking_ because that was what Jason did best. He comes into Dick with a slam of his head on the back of the passenger’s seat and Dick comes after him, following him over the crest of the tsunami, letting out a punched out sound into the hollow of Jason’s throat. They sit like that for a while and just breath. Jason’s cock softens, he tucks it into his pants but leaves it unzipped, unbuckled and just holds Dick in his arms and breaths.

There are no voices radioing in. There are no bodies burning.

There is only them.

**Author's Note:**

> This was initially inspired by the tags in the chapter summary of [empire's fic.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144990/chapters/40319522)
> 
> It was supposed to be a lot more lighthearted, but then, it turned into... something else. :(


End file.
